JUSTICE
“Not Getting No Treatment” Voices of medically at-risk detainees held at Cook County Jail BY: MAIRA KHWAJA AND EMMA PEREZ, INVISIBLE INSTITUTE
A
t the time of publication, Cook County Jail reports that three detainees have died from COVID-19: Jeffrey Pendleton, Leslie Pieroni, and Nicholas Lee were exposed to the novel coronavirus, along with at least 306 other detainees who have tested positive for the virus. This number is likely a low estimate; due to the conditions in the jail, detainees are exposed to the virus and are at risk of falling seriously ill. This is especially true for individuals in Division 8—the Residential Treatment Unit (RTU)—where detainees with injuries and medical conditions, making them especially vulnerable to infection, are housed. Cases of COVID-19 in the jail continue to multiply, as reports from jail staff detail the extent to which proper sanitation and social distancing measures are ignored. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart reassured the public on April 2 that “detainees are provided ample cleaning supplies, hand
sanitizer and soap… In addition, staff are provided with cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer, and gloves... Any detainee who shows symptoms of the virus is tested by staff at Cermak Health Services,” the jail hospital run by Cook County Health. Detainees in the RTU report otherwise. In phone interviews on April 6 and 7, six men inside a dormitory of thirty nine inmates described worsening health and sanitary conditions and a loss of access to their routine medical care. The following interviews are the detainees’ observations on the jail’s response to the crisis, in their own words. We are unable to fact check the backstories provided, because we don’t know the detainees’ names. We asked all interviewees to select their own pseudonyms as they passed the phone around, to prevent retaliation. Interviews have been edited and condensed. Extended interviews were published on SSW Radio.
Ezell has been in Cook County Jail since 2018. He recently came out of isolation after thirty-five days in a segregation cell. He was not showing any symptoms of COVID-19. He was then moved into the RTU, where he is surrounded by sick and immunocompromised detainees. I was just in segregation. Thirty-five days. I came out Monday, and I was not in this quarantine deck, and they put me on the quarantine deck with people that were over here sick. And I wasn't sick at all. They needed the space for another inmate that was going to segregation. I think I would
have rather stayed there. It's a lot of people over here sick. They need to do mandatory checks with the symptoms because some people over here are sick. I haven't had my temperature checked in months. My celly just left last night with a temperature of 101. And they didn't come clean or anything. We don't even have any cleaning supplies right now as we speak. A sergeant said, it's not any avoiding it, we are all going to catch it and that there's nothing she could do about it.
14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
¬ APRIL 15, 2020
BY J. MICHAEL EUGENIO
“You gotta be damn near dying to get medical attention.” Mike is thirty-six years old and was recently moved to Cook County Jail after serving seventeen years at Menard Correctional Center. He was originally sentenced to seventyfive years as a juvenile, but a judge found his sentence to be equivalent to a life sentence. He is in the jail awaiting an appeal. Mike has rheumatoid arthritis; the medication for his condition makes him more susceptible to infection. We don’t have no cleaning supplies, we don’t see the medical doctors, it’s just horrible. It’s like, we’re not getting no treatment. You gotta be damn near dying to get medical attention. And the nurses just come and pass our meds, and I’ve been trying to tell them I got rheumatoid arthritis, and that I’m not tryna
take my meds because it lowers my immune system. And I’m at high risk for catching the virus. We expect great from America. Whether you a convict or not, for them to treat us like this, it’s like we’re not humans at all. When I was in Menard, Homeland Security sent me a letter... they were going to deport me. At that time, I had seventy-five years at one hundred percent. The Illinois Supreme Court found it to be a de facto life sentence for juveniles. I’m planning on getting deported back to Mexico. That’s my goal right now. Getting out and getting back over there. Most of my family are from here, Chicago. I did all my time here. This is where I grew up.
Michael is thirty-five years old and has spent the last three months in Cook County Jail. He has a number of medical conditions, including high blood pressure, an enlarged heart, a hernia, and a recent diagnosis of Stage 2 Hodgkin’s
Lymphoma. He has not been receiving treatment since the outbreak of COVID-19. It's very nasty around here. I saw that Tom Dart came on TV saying that they’re giving us an abundance of cleaning supplies
